IT Workers to Receive Slight Pay Increases in 2010

At less than 2 percent, raises in technology salaries will be small in 2010, according to a report by Computer Economics. Developers are at the top of both the raise list and the salary list, especially for highly complex application development work. Managers and senior executives will have to get to the back of the line.

"By historical standards, the 1.8 percent median pay
raise is meager," CE wrote on its Website. "But in light of
still-high unemployment rates, the finding indicates IT executives are
responding to the need to retain their best workers and boost damaged morale."

By comparison, salary raises for tech workers in 2007 were 3.8 percent, CE data
showed. The effects of the recession on technology salaries will continue to be
felt for some time.

"With persistent unemployment, organizations will be
able to hire new workers at rates lower than those who were laid off during the
recession. This should place downward pressure on U.S.
national median salary levels over the coming months," CE said.

In Silicon Valley, wages for high technology workers
have been on a downward trend for eight years, the
Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the week of Feb. 1, though the BLS
expects real job and wage growth in biotechnology, pharmaceutical and medical
technology fields.

Who will be receiving the greatest salary increases of all technology areas in
2010? Developers and operations personnel are faring the best, according to CE.
IT managers and executives, however, will have to get in line to see any
significant bump upward in pay. Developers should receive 2.1 percent increases;
operations workers are expected to receive 2 percent boosts.

"The developers group includes application programmers, data analysts,
database administrators, business analysts, architects and others involved in
the development of new systems as well as the maintenance of existing systems,"
CE wrote. "Following close behind is the operations group, at 2.0 percent.
The data center operations group includes computer operators, production
control analysts, technical support representatives and help desk
representatives. We also include technical writers, trainers and librarians in
this group."

Below operations, but ahead of managers and executives, are network and systems
support workers, who are due to see 1.9 percent raises in 2010, according to
CE, which defined the group as including "network
administrators, system administrators, storage administrators, security
analysts, telecom analysts and Webmasters, among others."
Application developers and SOA (service-oriented
architecture) specialists, according to the January Dice report, are getting
the most pay. Dice said:

"Continuing to lead the pack in top paid
skills is ABAP-Advanced Business Application Programming ($115,916), followed
by SOA-Service Oriented Architecture ($107,827), and ETL-Extract Transform and
Load ($105,844). ...